When to contact the counselor

Welcome back for another week!  I hope your first weekend found you with time to relax together as a family.  Given that your student has both an advisor and a school counselor, I thought this week I'd take some time to discuss when it's appropriate to contact the school counselor in context with when it is best to start with the advisor.

The school counselor role at Pembroke Hill is centered around the social-emotional and personal growth of our students.  Most of the time when I talk with an individual student, a small group of students, a colleague or a parent, we are discussing mental health concerns, friendship concerns, social dynamics, self-care skills, family situations and the like.  Additionally, I am involved in other conversations regarding topics such as, academic support, leadership skills, team building and school climate.  Because there is a wide umbrella and some overlap between the advisor role and the counselor role, it may be tough to know who to call first.

I wanted to share a link with you to an article that details the role of the school counselor that you may find helpful.  You can read it here: Understanding the School Counselor/Parent Connection.  Additionally I've listed below some common reasons I am usually contacted by a parent:

• When a student is experiencing a social conflict with a peer or peer group
• When there has been a change in the dynamics of the family that is impacting the child
• When a student is experiencing a personal struggle such as low self-esteem, questioning their sexual identity/gender, disrespectful behavior at home, a change in interests or peer group, etc.
• When a student needs support developing positive coping skills
• When a student is experiencing a difficult relationship with a teacher, coach or other adult
• When a student is experiencing anxiety: regarding school, extra-curricular activities, social situations, etc. 
• When a student is experiencing sadness, isolation, hopelessness or other similar emotions
• When a student has recently begun working with a therapist, has recently been diagnosed with a mental illness or is suspected of having a mental illness
• When collaboration with other staff members, such as the advisor, have stalled or when a parent/student feels more comfortable contacting the counselor for help
• When confidentiality needs are paramount

With each parent contact, the counselor response varies.  One size fits all most definitely does not apply here.  Our conversation may or may not result in my speaking with your child; in fact, often times it does not.  Many times I will not share the details of our conversation with any other faculty members either.  What will be shared, and what I will do to respond, will be decided upon together as we talk.  

Your child's advisor is an excellent resource for you as well.  Contact the advisor when you are curious to know how your child is doing in his/her classes, have a question about a school event, want to get some academic support for your child, have a minor social concern, or just feel most comfortable sharing whatever need your child has with the advisor.  

Whatever the reason you choose to reach out to the school for support, and whomever you connect with first, please know that we want to have the same goals for your child that you do.  Parenting is tricky, to put it mildly, and we are not in the business of judging.  We'll do our best to make sure that we are working together to see your child through whatever challenge may be facing them at the time.  Hopefully one day we'll look back and say "Remember when...." with a smile at how far your child has come!

Welcome to 2015-2016!

Greetings Middle School families!

It's finally here, the first day of school!  Have you noticed the red carpet our students walk on to get into school the first day?  Our Student Council ensures this fun tradition is in place each year.  I think that is one of my favorite things about Pembroke Hill, the faculty is not alone in their preparations for the school year.  Our students and families are just as involved.  I hope that you find that sense of community in our middle school this year as well.  We are a team, on an important 3 year journey.  It is an honor for us to be a part of this transformative time in your child's life.

I thought it would be appropriate for my first blog entry this year to give you a sneak peek into the ways the counseling and Advisory programs will be supporting you and your child over the next 9+ months.  To do that, I'd ask that you look over the following two documents:

Counseling Program Overview 2015-2016  Here you can see an outline of what is planned each month in Wellness and Advisory, as well as other relevant activities.  This plan is created to be flexible.  The flexibility is necessary as we schedule outside speakers to visit our school, work around the needs of teacher curriculum, address the needs of our students, etc.  The weekly blog entries will provide updates to the plan, as well as follow up information after the events.

Advisory Goals and Priorities  This document highlights the larger picture of this year's Advisory program, giving you some insight as to how we work to support each student through their time with their advisor.

If you look over this information and find yourself with unanswered questions, please feel free to contact me via email or phone (816-936-1200).

I hope your commute home is filled with fun stories from the first day.  However, just in case your teen gives you only, "It was fine," I have added a few pictures below to help fill in the gaps!

We are less than 2 weeks from the end of the year - in 14 days finals will be over, fields trips completed, everyone will know who is in which advisory, and we'll be looking at summer camps, vacations, sleeping in, and all the things that come with the break between school years.

One thing that has wrapped up is our 4th quarter advisory projects.  Each advisory took some time to focus on one of our 4 values: Respect, Compassion, Scholarship or Integrity.  From there the students and advisor worked together to design a project, carry it out and then present it to the other advisories.  We had our presentations on Tuesday of this week.  Some of the ideas shared were making blankets for Children's Place, partnering with low income schools to read/provide attendance incentives, making gift bags for Operation Breakthrough, having a "topic jar" in which students all submitted random topics that were then drawn, researched and discussed, and each person teaching their fellow advisees something new.  Some really wonderful projects!  There were many others, all equally impressive!  It was very inspiring to hear all the projects and has given us a great idea list to use next year!

Wellness lessons will wrap up on Tuesday of next week.  This past Wednesday a former PHS student talked candidly with our 8th grade about how she became involved with substance use, and then addiction, in high school.  Her agenda was not to persuade kids one way or another, or tell them what decisions to make, but rather to share her own struggles and how drinking and drugs impacted her life.  She did a wonderful job describing the normalcy around her early drinking days and why she got into the partying on the weekend lifestyle - and how it quickly turned into more.  Please do ask your 8th graders about the speaker.  Some possible questions to ask:

• What did you think of Kate's story?
• Why do you think Kate's drinking became an addiction?
• Have you thought about what you will do when someone invites you to a party with alcohol?
• Lots of people talk about how normal it is to drink and experiment with drugs in high school, do you think it's normal?

Experts agree that having open conversations like this with your teen will set the stage for them to come to you when they encounter a tough situation.  If you can limit telling them what to do, and let them do most of the talking, you do most of the listening, you are building a new kind of trust with your teen. We hope these type of Wellness lessons will allow you to have these conversations at home. 

There will be lessons for 7th and 8th grade on Monday and Tuesday of next week with speakers from First Call, a drug/alcohol recovery and prevention agency.  They will discuss the impact of alcohol and drugs on a developing teenage brain, as well as refusal strategies, followed by someone who is in recovery sharing their story and how it impacted those around them.  Should be another great opportunity to ask some of the same questions as above.  

Thanks to all of you for another great year in the middle school!  Hope you have a wonderful summer break!  

Mental Health Month

Welcome to May!  Yesterday I had my first May Day experience here at Pembroke Hill - what a treat!  I was blown away at the work that must go into putting on such a fun afternoon each year!  It was a great moment of joy in my week.  Tonight I look forward to watching our students perform in the 30th annual Showcase, yet another event that is done up right around here, but not without tremendous preparation!

I find it so fitting that May is chosen to be Mental Health Month.  May is sunny and warm, but often the weather accompanies busy schedules, long to-do lists, feeling overwhelmed, feeling run down, perhaps even feeling sad.  This is all especially true for our young people, who are still developing the coping skills to get them through challenging times.  In fact, suicide rates tend to rise in the spring.  Thus, we have an important job to do as the adults in our children's lives.  Let's be vigilant.  Let's look for signs of distress.  Let's talk with each other.  Let's show our kids that we are here for them.  Let's point out their small successes.  Let's ensure some down time.

In the spirit of mental health awareness I thought I would devote the rest of this blog to sharing some wonderful community resources with you.

First is a community forum coming up soon regarding social media safety.  Many thanks to Coach Budzinski for sharing this with me!
#We'reBackOnline

Next I want to direct you to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).  This link is to their Kansas City chapter.  You can find opportunities to get involved, information about support groups and more!
http://www.namikc.org/

Also from NAMI is a great fact sheet about how stigma impact mental illness perceptions and treatment
Mental Illness and Stigma

And from the US Department and Health and Human Services, some myths and facts about mental illness
http://www.mentalhealth.gov/basics/myths-facts/

We have many more excellent mental health services here in the area.  If I can ever be of assistance to you in connecting with counseling services, please let me know.

Spring Finals Preparation

This week in advisory groups have begun to discuss upcoming finals.  We have used two documents to help our students prepare for these exams.

First, is a document created by our current 7th graders.  In January, following their first set of finals, Mrs. Kobolt talked with 7th grade about their preparation for the winter exams: what worked, what didn't, how they planned to prepare for the tests this spring, etc.  All of these thoughts were collected in this document: Class of 2020 Finals Reflection.  Advisors showed and discussed this document this week with their students.

Secondly, as we have in the past, we provided students with a study planning guide to support them in their preparations for finals.  You can find a link to that guide here: Finals Planner

Busy spring schedules and final exams can leave some students feeling run down and stressed.  This time of year we can support our students by ensuring they are getting plenty of sleep, eating a balanced diet, finding some down time, and being thoughtful about how they spend their time.  If your child needs further strategies, here are some tried and true ideas:

1. Positive Self-Talk:  "I can do this!"  "I am prepared"  "I have a plan to be ready"  "I've made it through tough times before"
2. Visualization - Imagine yourself being successful
3. Muscle relaxation - starting with your face, consciously relax your muscles, move to the shoulders, down the arms, through the torso, and down the legs
4. Deep breathing - practice slow belly breaths, hands on the stomach, feel the stomach fill with air as you inhale for 5 counts and then fill the air leave the stomach as you slowly exhale.  Repeat 3-5 times

April Wellness Lessons Wrap Up

Each week when I begin to write a new entry in this blog I get very excited to share all the things happening in our middle school world with you, and this week is no exception!  

On Monday the 6th grade students gathered for Wellness.  As shared in the presentation link last week, we discussed what constitutes Passive, Aggressive and Assertive behaviors.  The students did an EXCELLENT job engaging in the lesson and taking it seriously.  I was really impressed!  The lesson was largely an active one for the 6th graders.  They worked with a partner to talk through some tough situations, and what it would like to responding passively, aggressively and assertively.  We also acted these scenarios out, which lead to laughter and conversation regarding what would be most helpful in each instance.  Below is an example of the scenario sheet students worked to complete.

Tuesday the 8th grader students used their advisory time to meet with Mrs. Lamb, our Upper School Counselor, and a panel of seniors to talk about the US experience.  Students heard how Advisory is different next year, the importance of getting to know their teachers, mistakes the seniors made their freshman year, and about balancing academics and extra curricular activities.  

8th grade students are meeting for Wellness lessons today with Keith from MOCSA.  Keith is the male speaker who presented at our parent presentation a few weeks ago.  The lesson began by talking about boundaries.  Students talked about personal space, not liking if someone touches their phone without asking, etc. which lead to a discussion about how important boundaries are in all relationships.  Boundaries help us feel safe.  Next the discussion moved to the concept of consent.  It was discussed that you need consent to do anything in a relationship.  You need consent to be in the relationship, to go to the movies with someone, to visit someone's home, and for any physical contact with someone else.  This was demonstrated through the idea of the "magic pen."  If you are looking for a follow up conversation with your child at home, consider asking them about the "magic pen" portion of the lesson.  The following things were the take-aways from the magic pen:

• You can not forcefully take something from someone, someone should not forcefully take anything from you
• You should not manipulate people into giving you something, no one should be manipulating you to give them something/do something
• You might share something with someone one day, but that does not mean you need to the next - and you should not expect that someone will share something with you again
• Blackmail is unacceptable
• You can give someone something and then change your mind and ask for it back
• All of the above when put into the context of consent within a relationship are indicators as to the health of the relationships

From there students discussed healthy and unhealthy relationships and talked through some example scenarios.  Keith encouraged students to look for the warning signs.  When warning signs are apparent students were asked:  Would you break up with this person?  Would you talk to a parent about it?  Would you help a friend in an unhealthy relationship?  Again, these are great points to discuss with your child at home.  Let them know that they can talk with you when something feels unsafe or unhealthy in a relationship.  The handouts the students received also list the crisis line for MOCSA.

I hope to be done meeting with each 5th grade student by next Friday.  5th grade students will learn who their middle school advisor is on May 15 :)

Helping our community and ourselves

What an incredible week it's been!  It's been so packed with great things that I was convinced yesterday was Friday when I got home!

On Monday many advisories got to work getting materials ready for Harvesters and the United States Postal Service to deliver to families around the metro at the beginning of May.  The program called, "Stamp Out Hunger" makes it easy for people in our community to donate food to Harvesters by leaving a bag of groceries at their mailbox on May 9th.  Who knows, maybe you'll get some materials in your mailbox that were prepared by one of our students!

Tuesday afternoon I had the opportunity to talk with 7th grade students in Wellness lessons about peer pressure.  To get us started students were divided into groups and asked to create a secret handshake and password for their group only.  From there one group was asked to break up and try to join the other groups.  Each of the other groups had instructions as to how they would respond to those trying to join.  Some groups were allowed to accept new members, others were not.  Students completed a reflection sheet following the activity (example included below) and we used that to discuss the innate need to belong and how that can make responding to peer pressure so tricky.  From there students listed on the back of their reflection sheet ways that they or a friend of theirs has experienced peer pressure in middle school.  I have also included some photos of those responses below.  Given that several students included drugs and alcohol in their peer pressure list, we have extended our substance abuse speaker scheduled to talk with the 8th grade in May to also talk with our 7th graders.  The lesson wrapped up with role playing out how to respond to the situations the students had listed on their papers.  We analyzed the responses that students gave for effectiveness.  It was also discussed how it is much easier to give the "right answers" in a classroom setting and so much more challenging in real social situations.  The students were encouraged to think through these possible scenarios now and plan their response so they are armed with tools should they be needed.  The strategies used by students in the role plays included:

• "The Broken Record" - repeating your "No" over and over again
• Stating a reason why you aren't going to do what you are being asked to do
• Encouraging the other person to make a better choice
• Telling a little fib (I have to pick up my sister)
• Leaving the situation
• Distraction - changing the subject, or as one of our natural entertainers acted out, pretending to fall!

Thursday afternoon ended on a very high note!  We were able to honor Haley and her family and send them off on their trip in style.  It was a good feeling being able to recognize all the students who worked to fulfill Haley's wish and to be able to present the Make-A-Wish Foundation with one of those fun big checks! We saw our core values at work and the impact it had on young girl firsthand.  I believe the events of the afternoon will be covered in an upcoming Horizons magazine edition and parent newsletter.  

Looking ahead to next week, 6th and 8th grade will meet for Wellness lessons and the 8th graders will meet Kathy Lamb, our Upper School Counselor during Advisory on Tuesday.  I will continue visiting with 5th grade students in the afternoons as well!  I have included below the plans for the 6th and 8th grade Wellness lessons.

6th Grade - Passive, Aggressive and Assertive Behaviors

On Monday morning 6th grade students will meet for Wellness during their PE classes.  We will define passive, aggressive and assertive Behaviors and discuss reasons why someone might respond or behave in each manner.  You can see the definitions I will be using here: Definitions.  After we have defined these behaviors, students will work in pairs to talk about fictional situations and determine what a passive, aggressive and assertive response would be to each of the situations.  We'll then have some of the pairs act out their responses in front of the class and discuss their effectiveness.  The goal of the lesson is to equip students with the skills needed to be assertive in common social situations, thus leading to strong refusal skills in peer pressure types of situations.  I will share examples from the lesson with you next week as I have done with the 7th grade today.

8th Grade - Healthy and Unhealthy Relationships presented by MOCSA

On Friday, experts from the Metropolitan Organization to Counter Sexual Assault will be speaking with our 8th grade students in their PE classes.

Description from MOCSA: Students learn the differences between healthy and unhealthy relationships by taking a closer look at personal relationships.  Discussion focuses on communication, respect and personal boundaries.  Students will receive the following handouts:

Relationship Rights

Relationship Boundaries